As Spring approaches in Tomales and Earth Day approaches for the globe, we thought it would be timely to learn more about how Easwaran’s teachings encompass caring for the natural world. Over the next two months, we will be immersing ourselves in how the eight-point program relates to stewardship of the environment.
Easwaran’s book The Compassionate Universe discusses how our spiritual practice connects with respecting and caring for the earth. We’ll spend some time studying excerpts from this book, but also connect with the environment through a passage, and try a few practical experiments to deepen our engagement with our natural surroundings.
Submit your choice!
If you haven’t yet selected your preferred nature-themed passage to study this month, feel free to submit your choice below.
Reading Study
We'll set the tone and give context to this environment theme by sharing an excerpt from Easwaran. In the excerpt below from The Compassionate Universe, Easwaran discusses our how we can learn to understand the source of our actions, and what he means by a “compassionate universe”.
Though we seldom realize it, we too are part of the tropical rain forest. Even if we live thousands of miles from the nearest tropical zone, our lives are connected to the rain forest by many invisible links.
One of those links is the vital role that tropical plants play in modern medicine; a fourth of all our medicines are derived from them. Indeed, for thousands of years forests have been recognized as a great resource for healing. A significant story is told aboutone of the greatest figures in the history of medicine, the physician Jivaka, who is said to have served as the Buddha’s personal physician. Before graduating from the ancient Indian equivalent of Harvard Medical School, Jivaka and his classmates were given a final examination. Each was handed a basket and sent into the forest to bring back any herbs or plants that had no medicinal use. All the other interns brought back armfuls of flowers and leaves, but Jivaka returned empty-handed. When he came before his surprised teacher, he explained: “We may not know it yet, but there is a use for every tree, herb, plant, and flower in the forest.”
Twenty-five hundred years later, we still know little about the mysterious, promising world of the rain forest – but what we do know is astonishing. After testing less than one tenth of the species present, biologists have found that at least fourteen hundred tropical plant species contain substances active against cancer; and they suspect that rain forests may contain many plants with the potential to treat still-unconquered diseases, like AIDS.
Undoubtedly, many more generations of scientists could spend their lives exploring the rain forests and we would still know only a fraction. Edward O. Wilson, the noted Harvard biologist, estimates that it would require 25,000 researchers just to document the unknown species. Yet it is no longer certain that those generations – the scientists and doctors our children will grow up to be – will have that chance.
[…]
When we begin to study a phenomenon, we do not actually know what we are studying. In order to learn more about it, we formulate an hypothesis. It is important to keep in mind, however, that until we thoroughly test our hypothesis, and compare the results of our experiments with its predictions, we are not on solid ground. Of course, where there are gaps in our knowledge we must have an hypothesis, but we must also test that hypothesis – rigorously and with an uncompromising regard for the truth. Where the hypothesis is inaccurate, we must do more research.
The hypothesis of industrial civilization was that by acquiring and consuming more things we would become happy, fulfilled, and healthy. Every day this seems less likely. As I look back, I wonder how I could ever have been taken in by the belief that each of us is a separate speck in a universe of insignificant, competing fragments. There is so little to recommend this view; yet I, like almost everyone else influenced by industrial conditioning, had unquestioningly based my life on it. Now it is clear to me that this assumption, which has been presented with authority as the truth, the fruit of centuries of scientific investigation, is only an hypothesis.
We have an alternative: a different hypothesis of who we are and how we fit into the universe. This different image of the human being and the world, which I shall present in the second and third sections of this book, does not contradict the findings of science. It simply asks that we carry our investigations further, into the deeper sources of our actions. Up to now, we have learned well how to serve our addiction to profit, but we have not learned how to serve our long-range health and well-being. We have not learned who we are or why we are here. We have unnecessarily limited our science – and ourselves.
The hypothesis of a compassionate universe is not new, nor is the investigation I am proposing. It has been suggested before, at many times, in many places, and by many great and eloquent voices. What is different now is our unprecedented opportunity to test it in every aspect of life. Indeed, as the only creatures on earth who have the power – and, it sometimes seems, the inclination – to bring life on this planet to an end, it is our responsibility to test the hypothesis as it has never been tested before. The choice is ours. It can only be made by each of us, one at a time, one day at a time, but the results will shape the lives of our children and our children’s children for centuries to come. Our choice, I hope, will ensure that those centuries will come in peace and harmony and those children will flourish.